SPLEEN is the personal blog of Stephen Judd

I really want to talk about a thing. I have been an active practitioner of the thing, and I know a lot about the law around the thing, and I also know a lot about the technology that supports it which is my bread and butter activity.

I don't think I can safely talk about it any more though.

First, it would hurt my employer reputationally and maybe commercially. They don't deserve it: this is my crusade.

Second, it could hurt me. I would like to work in this town again. Wellington is small and New Zealand is small and people who kill other people's business initiatives are not popular people.

Third, I really believe I'm right about the thing, and I don't want critics to mistake my position for a commercially interested one. I have genuine public policy concerns here and they're more important than I am.

Fundamentally, this is a problem wherever technology and policy intersect.

This is why we in industry desperately need our colleagues in academia to speak out. You have the ability and the mandate to do this where we're scared. And this is where academics really need us to support them. Yes, they're going to gore your ox today, the upside is they're going to gore mine tomorrow.

I wrote to the offspring as follows (she had txted asking for advice on what to do with all the silverbeet she had got at the market):

You can use the green part of the leaves pretty much anywhere that calls for spinach. It won't cook down to as small a volume as spinach though. If you do that, you'll have all these stalks, and they're actually quite a nice vegetable in their own right, a bit sweetcorn-tasting, and you can chop them up and steam them or stir-fry them or braise or whatever.

My go-to approach for silver beet is:

- wash the silverbeet and don't worry about drying it

- slice an onion

- roughly separate leaves from stalks

- slice the stalks against the grain

- shred the leaves

- saute the onion, as it's going transparent add the stalks, maybe a little salt, keeping sauteing, then add the shredded leaves, stir, add a tablespoon or two of liquid, let the whole thing steam with a lid on for 5-10 minutes

If looking for recipes, remember Americans call silverbeet "chard".

I was visiting my friend Yan today and I was interested to see in his kitchen he didn't have silverbeet in the fridge, it was standing in a jar of water on the bench... intriguing way to keep fresh.

The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life. The violation of the masses, whom Fascism, with its Führer cult, forces to their knees, has its counterpart in the violation of an apparatus which is pressed into the production of ritual values.

I want to write something along these lines and have been collecting material for some time. Would you read it? What would you want to see included?

Online voting in New Zealand

The history of and prospects for attempts to automate New Zealand's democracy

Introduction

Online voting is a problem of interest in its own right, but also a good example of how we think about technology in government.

This work seeks to answer these questions:

Why do New Zealanders want to have or want to not have online voting?

What are the prospects for an online voting implementation in New Zealand?

What are the wider lessons?

by bringing together political science (voting), computer science (cryptography, security), information technology (project management, procurement, security), humanities (situating the foregoing in a continuing discourse about progress, voting as a signifier of civic and national health, ...).

Motivated by increasing calls both for and against [but need review to justify claim of "increase" here, maybe this isn't so], against background of secular trend in voter participation, rapid change in technology, above all rapid change in expectations of technology.

Current scene

Define "online" voting -- for our purposes, voting over the internet, through a web browser or mobile phone application. That is, not US-style voting machines.

Review the last couple of decades in NZ and bring to present:

Postal voting in local goverment -- introduction, history, pros, cons

Online voting outside government -- look at current providers, look at experience of users